Wisecrack
by Zarius
Summary: Love is always wise, unless it's a wisecrack


**BLACK MIRROR:**

 **WISECRACK**

 **WRITTEN BY ZARIUS**

* * *

Parties are meant to be lively.

Lively people, full of joy and song.

And jokes.

You've got to have jokes, for Jokes are beutiful.

Thy're beutiful because they're legal lies.

You could tell a million of them freely, openly, and not harm a soul with your story. The only people you make light of are invisible, they're not real.

Trouble is, with jokes, is that they matter much more when they are about real situations, real people. They're not often people you know, then that's taking it too far.

So you make it about celebrities, you make it about the untouchable, you bring them down to a level you'd like to see lowered to.

It's an easier method today than it was when it belonged to tomorow.

The public vote with special apps on their i-pads, the most well told jokes are attached to a chart listing the names of noones, virtual zeroes, and someones, people of hight stature.

It's shaped like a thermustad, If the joke is immensly popular, the celebrity or non-celebrity it targets rises in appreciation figures. Eventually, if the joke becomes overused, ages badly, or becomes too repetitive, it "cools off". The real world reacts accordingly and adjusts, placing another big name at the top of the polls and drops the celebrity or noone made light of to a lower "temperature". If they drop way below, everything about them is frozen, their assests, their perks, everything.

Once you're made light of, once you experiance the burn, it's hard to crawl out of the cold.

Here, let me give you an example.

The person at this party is a bit of a local hero, a comedian who gets by on telling observational jokes about people he knows. He's never mean-spirited about it, he does'nt attempt to assasinate their character, he just describes their mistakes in a manner that gets everyone laughing. He exaggerates a bit.

Just a bit.

Ok, you could say he lies, but is'nt that what some jokes are? Lies?

Yes. Some are.

But never the best ones.

He meets a woman at this party, another comedian, this one is strikingly fit, for a smoker at the very least, she likes to socialize in a shellsuit. She's the ironic kind of comedy. It's her gimmick, she loves it, and people love her.

But she likes to bring celebrities down to our level, and she always goes for the more offensive jokes.

The jokes that ring true.

The man is fascinated by this, he wants to get to know her better, he strikes up a conversation, he notices things about her behavior. The way she talks, the way she moves.

She gets a little tipsy, she spills some of the drink across her shellsuit.

His glass of wine was'nt empty, but he already felt full.

He could take control of the room. Right now. It'd be easy.

Tell people about what he'd just witnessed, give them something to laugh about.

He had respect for her though, and he found her quite attractive.

The two talked, the two struck up a connection, the two fall for each other, as they must.

Their connection goes beyond the party, the subsequant months see them bring a life into this world, a daughter.

This girl's journey would be shared by the father on the club scene.

Observational comedy. Harmless exaggerations, but he found simply telling the truth about life with a six month year old crawling about in her own filth and throwing up on the mother in bed with the slightest dose of humerous annecdote is what caused his approval rates to go up and up.

A nobody became a somebody, and with it came perks

He lost track of how many baby showers there were from the public let alone his own family.

He and his girlfriend attended every one of them, and they found it lively.

Parties are meant to be lively.

What does'nt stay alive, what does'nt stay alight, is the burn.

Eventually, it all cools off.

Children grow, children evolve, and the fun in how they deal with their growing pains soon becomes an all too harsh reminder of the everyday struggles people experiance from day to day. Everyone is bullied, everyone argues, everyone leaves.

Everyone seeks escapism.

The joke can be a kinder fiction, or it can be a crass but comical reflection of reality.

And most of the time it's the latter.

When it ceases to be even that, it can only become the former, and society is not tailored to approciate that anymore.

So the daughter cools off, she loses her perks, her boyfriends cut ties from her, she can't even attend school. She can't even stay with her family.

The man and woman are way too busy keeping other nobodies and somebodies in the charts to notice. Their field of expertise keeps the wheel turning.

The daughter fails to understand that, and takes a dive off the nearest bridge.

Love is always wise unless it's a wisecrack.


End file.
